Onto a new song

He calls himself a "one-dimensional" guy, but longtime Charlevoix band director Gary Stutzman seems anything but.

Here's how Stutzman describes his approach to education: "I'm one-dimensional," he says. "I'm a band guy, I'm a band guy, I'm a band guy."

But here's what Stutzman has done throughout his career, which he recently ended at Northwest Academy in Charlevoix:

He began his career as a student at Charlevoix public schools, taught in Flint as a new graduate, came back as a young teacher, left for Colorado, but couldn't stay away, came back to Michigan, started marketing, and finally, in 1996, started as Northwest Academy's part-time band director.

And it is from Northwest that Stutzman has recently retired.

His position started with the school: It too opened in 1996.

"It's been a blessing in my life," he said. "I've done everything from cleaning floors to painting walls. I built my own band room."

He built his own band, too. Northwest Academy, a charter school, is small. Enrollment hovers around 115 for K-12 (and online students), and Stutzman said his band classes averaged in the tens of kids rather than hundreds. That experience was a little different from the bands he led as an assistant to Clarence Odmark, Charlevoix's well-known band director for whom the performance pavilion in East Park is named.

Stutzman began teaching at Charlevoix High School in 1970 after a short stint at Flint Northern High School. Stutzman, who served as Odmark's assistant, helped oversee the hundreds of students that were at that time in the Charlevoix marching, symphonic, concert and jazz bands.

Soon, Odmark retired, leaving Stutzman in charge of the entire band program — beginning band through all the high school bands.

"There were more than 400 kids," said Stutzman. "It was huge. I couldn't do it alone anymore."

So Stutzman left the job, spending 11 years in Colorado as a representative for a professional fundraising company.

But he missed education, and he missed Michigan, so Stutzman returned to Charlevoix and its lakes.

Back home, Stutzman continued to work in marketing — a skill that would eventually marry well with his work at Northwest Academy.

At Northwest, Stutzman didn't let small class sizes stop him from building a good band.

The key, says Stutzman, himself a tuba player, is to build a band from the bottom up.

Ron Winchester, owner of Winchester Funeral Home in Charlevoix, can attest to Stutzman's love of low-brass. Though Winchester was a student of Stutzman's from 1970-75, while Stutzman was at Charlevoix, he convinced Winchester to switch instruments from trumpet to tuba.

"He got me to play tuba and then I never forgave him for that," Winchester joked.

Winchester said Stutzman's teaching gift was obvious.

"The band parents used to refer to him as the pied piper. Kids would go anywhere with him," said Winchester. "He was able to retain a lot of that energy right throughout his career. He was able to pull music out of people."

Those people included the young students at Northwest Academy. In 1999, just three years after the school opened, the band played at the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association's State Band and Orchestra Festival. To attend that festival, bands have to earn an overall rating of "1" at a district festival — not an easy feat.

In 2004, the academy's advanced band played at the Michigan band association's annual convention in Ann Arbor.

Stutzman's involvement doesn't stop inside classroom walls. He also directs the Charlevoix City Band and plays in several bands, including the Pine River Jazz Band, the Northern Michigan Brass Band, Castle Brass. He was instrumental, Winchester said, in both band shell projects in downtown Charlevoix — as well as keeping music alive within people who are no longer in school.

"He's good at getting kids involved in music, and keeping people interested in music," said Winchester. "That's really his biggest gift, I think, is to keep people interested in music."